death penalty


A Marathon of Appeals

A Marathon of AppealsThe younger Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death on Friday. There will be victim impact statements this week, and then the appeals process begins which will drag on until I am old.

I don’t support the death penalty, even for shitty humans like Tsarnaev, and the majority of my neighbors agree. He was tried in Federal court, which sought the death penalty, so only jurors who were open to the idea (or “death qualified” in terrifying legal parlance) of state-sponsored murder were allowed to serve. Those jurors had a terrible job, and I’m sure they performed commendably, but their selection was not representative of the community.

The Richard family, who lost their young son and so much more in the bombing, publicly opposed a death sentence in a moving essay in the Boston Globe. It makes arguments in favor of the death penalty look like nothing more than petty vengeance.

Read the comic at The Nib.


Death Penalty Dissonance

Death Penalty DissonanceSince lethal injection drugs are becoming scarce and no longer efficient at the whole “lethal” thing, Utah’s getting ready to bring back the firing squad, while other states are dusting off their electric chairs and gas chambers. Somehow these are all more preferable than calling off capital punishment altogether, which often results in the executions of many, many innocent people. But at least they got a trial. The same can’t be said for the summary executions the United States conducts overseas.

Read the comic at The New York Times.